Do Atheists Feel Guilt?

[seer]

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. Richard Dawkins

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11416

If this is so, and blame and responsibility are merely useful fictions, and the very idea of responsibility is nonsense - why then feel guilt? Just ignore such feelings and realize that you had no choice.

[Machinist]

That is a great question! Maybe they don't? Maybe they do? We'll al be confused if the latter is true. Maybe it's more than just a maladjusted attitude

[Machinist]

....P.S. like it's something that you just can't easily shake off or ignore.

[seer]

....P.S. like it's something that you just can't easily shake off or ignore.

Well rationally you would know that guilt would be unfounded.

[Machinist]

Well rationally you would know that guilt would be unfounded.

Guilt would be unfounded yes. But why can't it still be a motivator or have any influence on the psyche, or soul or spirit? Would that not be possible? To know that something is unfounded on a very surface rational level, yet still feel it?

[Stoic]

If this is so, and blame and responsibility are merely useful fictions, and the very idea of responsibility is nonsense - why then feel guilt? Just ignore such feelings and realize that you had no choice.

If guilt is the product of evolution, then it may serve a useful purpose, even if I don't know exactly what that purpose is. (Though I suspect that purpose is to make me less likely to repeat certain counterproductive behaviors. For that matter, the prospect of feeling guilty might prevent me from exhibiting such behaviors in the first place.)

Perhaps guilt is like my craving for sugar, which once served a useful purpose, but isn't needed for that purpose anymore. Even so, trying to ignore guilt isn't likely to be more fruitful than trying to ignore my craving for sugar.

Of course, guilt can be overdone, and can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and progressively worse behavior. It's important to be able to forgive yourself, and keeping in mind that you are merely the product of your genes and your environment might help towards that end. One might not be able to completely wipe out guilt that way, but it could help to keep it to manageable levels.

And if someone is able to completely rid himself of guilt, and doesn't need it to control his behavior, then more power to him. That is probably the level of enlightenment that Dawkins felt he would never reach.

[Starlight]

Do Atheists Feel Guilt?

Troll title much?

Shall I start a "Do Christians have a sense of smell?" thread?

Of course atheists feel guilt. Your OP doesn't in any way make the case that they don't. The position Dawkins is arguing for isn't that they don't feel guilt, it's that a sufficiently philosophical person ought to intellectually acknowledge how causation works.

But even the most philosophical such a person is almost certainly going to feel guilt because their body naturally produces it, just as they feel pain because their body produces that. Sure you could try and philosophically/intellectually train yourself to believe pain is just an illusion, just a nerve signal, and so try to ignore it, but you'd still actually feel it.

As far as Dawkins' argument goes that we should intellectually acknowledge that causation means that we are ultimately not responsible for our actions, I don't buy it. We are the ones that do our actions. Even if processes at the quantum level or nerve level are not under our control and ultimately cause our actions, we are the entity that performs those actions and makes those choices.

How about I spin it around: Christians ought not to feel guilt because Christ took all the guilt of your sins onto him. As Martin Luther said, "sin boldly". So how about your delete this thread and start a new one explaining to your fellow Christians that they don't feel guilt?

[seer]

Troll title much?

As far as Dawkins' argument goes that we should intellectually acknowledge that causation means that we are ultimately not responsible for our actions, I don't buy it. We are the ones that do our actions. Even if processes at the quantum level or nerve level are not under our control and ultimately cause our actions, we are the entity that performs those actions and makes those choices.

That makes no sense, that is like saying an automaton programmed to kill is responsible for the act. And if Dawkins is correct we don't make choices in the usual sense any more than the automaton would.

[seer]

If guilt is the product of evolution, then it may serve a useful purpose, even if I don't know exactly what that purpose is. (Though I suspect that purpose is to make me less likely to repeat certain counterproductive behaviors. For that matter, the prospect of feeling guilty might prevent me from exhibiting such behaviors in the first place.)

Perhaps guilt is like my craving for sugar, which once served a useful purpose, but isn't needed for that purpose anymore. Even so, trying to ignore guilt isn't likely to be more fruitful than trying to ignore my craving for sugar.

Of course, guilt can be overdone, and can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and progressively worse behavior. It's important to be able to forgive yourself, and keeping in mind that you are merely the product of your genes and your environment might help towards that end. One might not be able to completely wipe out guilt that way, but it could help to keep it to manageable levels.

And if someone is able to completely rid himself of guilt, and doesn't need it to control his behavior, then more power to him. That is probably the level of enlightenment that Dawkins felt he would never reach.

But now that you know you really have no responsibility for your acts - good or bad - there logically is no praise or blame.

[Machinist]

But now that you know you really have no responsibility for your acts - good or bad - there logically is no praise or blame.

I think that is what Stoic is saying.

?

[Machinist]

Fear often times is irrational yet it moves us to do things.

[Stoic]

But now that you know you really have no responsibility for your acts - good or bad - there logically is no praise or blame.

Yet we still have to live with the consequences of our actions. And praising and blaming (or refraining from doing so) are actions which have consequences.

[eider]

[B]If this is so, and blame and responsibility are merely useful fictions, and the very idea of responsibility is nonsense - why then feel guilt? Just ignore such feelings and realize that you had no choice.[/B]

That looks like Psychosis to me.

[eider]

If this is so, and blame and responsibility are merely useful fictions, and the very idea of responsibility is nonsense - why then feel guilt? Just ignore such feelings and realize that you had no choice.

Ah...... Dawkins, Lord, how he loves his voice.

If that guy should be summing up a case before a Court, the judge, Jury, lawyers, the public and guards all would soon be fast asleep, and if the defendant could just stay awake s/he would be able to walk free through the snoozing crowd.

Yes, consideration for circumstances before and during a crime should always be heard and considered, and where convictions are brought then rehabilitation should always be sought ... wherever possible.

That view can be held by anybody despite religion or not, imo.

[seer]

Ah...... Dawkins, Lord, how he loves his voice.

If that guy should be summing up a case before a Court, the judge, Jury, lawyers, the public and guards all would soon be fast asleep, and if the defendant could just stay awake s/he would be able to walk free through the snoozing crowd.

Yes, consideration for circumstances before and during a crime should always be heard and considered, and where convictions are brought then rehabilitation should always be sought ... wherever possible.

That view can be held by anybody despite religion or not, imo.

I'm not speaking of what the courts do or don't do, I'm speaking of a personal sense of moral guilt. Which would be irrational if out our acts are predetermined by antecedent conditions.